Has anyone had problems with the cheaper Polaroid ink replacement cartridges? All of a sudden, my prints are printing way dark and a little red and blocked-up. In other words, they look like ass and its driving me nuts what the problem is. All settings seem to be the same as when prints looked perfect. But I started using these new polaroid inks and I think it was afterwards when I noticed these printing issues.

Why in the world would you use a 3rd party inkset on a photographic printer that has the ink chemistry and paper coating chemistry matched? You are asking for problems in clogs and color mismatches. I assume that the new ink set came with a simple set of ICC profiles for it?

I agree with the other posters, first of all... I wouldn't use anything but Epson OEM inks in a Stylus Photo printer. Especially when you consider that the Epson printheads are fixed in the printer and if you mess one up you're in a world of hurt, it's just not worth it. You can get them cheap if you shop around - Calumet Photo and Fry's Electronics (online Outpost.com) are the cheapest big dealers that I know for these inks.

Secondly, did you flush the printhead before you switched inks? They make cartridges just for that. If you didn't, and you mixed two different ink chemistries, you could have gunked up your printer. Time to run some deep cleaning cycles.

Often its not the ink, but how you store it. Ink cartridges should be stored upright, so that the top of the ink cart (relative to the printer) is stored pointing up (the same as it is in the printer). If you take your new carts and store them for 24 hours upgright before installing, you might see a change.
But also keep in mind that if you don't use your inkjet printer almost everyday, the ink starts to dry in the heads clogging some and causing other noticeable effects on your prints. Sometimes a good hot water soak of the head is called for.
Cheers,
rfs

I'll try all kinds of different paper on my Epson 2200. But at $600+ in total cost for the printer, not to mention needing a quality printer to deliver prints to my clients when the lab just won't do, I ain't messing with 3rd party inks!